


show them something good

by spiekiel



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Sports, Archery, M/M, archery!AU, pietro is a pain in clint's ass, they're all competitive archers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 08:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4699412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiekiel/pseuds/spiekiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro grins up at him from where he’s sitting cross legged on Clint’s hotel room bed, in his underwear and one of Clint’s USA Archery sweatshirts, eating a bowl of yogurt.  With granola, the bastard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	show them something good

The thing is, Clint used to be a prodigy.The Olympics at fourteen, number one in the world three years later, another Olympics, seven World Cup titles, three world records, at twenty-five Bow International dubbed him the “most eligible bachelor in archery,” another Olympics at twenty-six, two consecutive national titles, back to number one by twenty-eight, and six months later - 

 

“This place doesn’t even _deserve_ the title ‘shithole,’ man,” Sam accuses, poking a pair of boxers thrown over the back of Clint’s couch with a stray chopstick.“Fucking hell.Jesus.What’s that smell.”

 

Standing just outside the doorway, in the empty hallway, Coulson has a vague sort of wrinkle to his nose that means he agrees.Clint flips both of them from under the pile of blankets on his bed, which is in the same room as everything else, and grumbles wordlessly into the pillow that’s using a sweatshirt as a pillowcase.

 

Coulson tucks his hands in the pockets of his USA Archery windbreaker to avoid touching anything diseased before he steps into the shoebox apartment.“Your mental health leave was over two days ago, Barton,” he says, an underlying tightness in his voice the only indication that he wants to hit Clint over the head.“If you don’t report for training tomorrow, Coach is dumping you as an RA.”

 

Clint turns his head enough to say intelligibly, “Fuck Coach.”Because if Fury’s not in the room, he can’t strike the fear of God into Clint’s sorry ass.

 

Sam is using the chopstick to navigate the mess of food wrappers, beer cans, and shitty magazines piled onto Clint’s coffee table.“What the hell, man,” he says, when finds an issue of _Woman’s Day_ with Katie Holmes on the cover, “did you give up on life, or something?”

 

“Yes,” Clint confirms, “and I forgot to renew Netflix.”

 

“Who the fuck forgets to renew Netflix,” Sam says with a high degree of horror, while Coulson gets close enough to nudge Clint through the covers with his foot, and demands, “Get up, Barton.Stop your wallowing.Every archer goes through target panic at some point in their career.”

 

“Yeah,” Sam says helpfully.He throws the chopstick at Clint’s head.“You should be thankful you got on this long without it, you lucky bastard.”

 

Clint rolls onto his back, because Coulson has expertly removed the blanket pile from atop him without even taking his hands out of his pockets.“I can’t come back from that, Phil.”

 

Coulson puts on his best approxomation of a smile, a tiny, warm-hearted little thing.“Sure you can.You have to.Stage Three is in two weeks, and if you don’t whip your ass back into competition shape, that Sokovian kid is going to kick you out of your number one spot.”

 

“Two weeks to kick the worst bout of target panic Coach has ever seen,” Clint laments, but he sits up anyways, mostly because Sam is busy throwing his dirty dishes out the window, muttering to himself about spontaneous generation.“Should be fun.”

 

>——>0))((0<——<

 

It’s not even an international shoot.It’s Outdoor Nationals, Clint’s shooting eliminations against a guy he’s been beating since they were teenagers, and his first shot, he flinches and shoots a two. 

 

Coulson shoots him a questioning look from behind the waiting line, raising his head from his spotting scope.Clint shrugs, and Coulson mouths, “Pull the arrow.”The next two shots go off fine, a ten and an x, and Clint walks down and flips his card to zero, shakes it off and puts the arrow that shot the two out of rotation.

 

The next round, he draws back, sights in his shot, slightly to the left of center to accomodate for a sidewind, he transfers deeper into his back automatically, because it’s second nature, the clicker goes off, his elbow jerks forward of its own accord before snapping back, and the arrow flies wildly down the seventy meter stretch and catches the one ring.

 

He very carefully does not look back to Coulson, just loads the next arrow, takes a centering breath through his nose, and tells himself that the next arrow is a ten.He reaches his bow arm out, pulls back, and - 

 

Makes the exact same shot, again.He can feel his opponent’s eyes on the back of his head, confused.

 

“Shake it off,” Coulson tells him, when he comes back to his bowstand.Clint stretches his arms back behind him to feel his shoulders pop, like maybe he’s just stiff.“Strong shots next end.You know how to shoot.”

 

Clint tugs at his finger sling discontentedly.“I’m coming out of load the second the clicker goes off.”

 

Coulson’s expression goes anxious for about a hundredth of a second, but then he just nods and says, “Focus on back tension.It’s nothing you can’t come back from. You can take the next set.”

 

Clint nods silently, and goes to score his arrows when the buzzer sounds three times.But he doesn’t take the next set, he misses the bale entirely all three times, and then Fury and Coulson and Hill all spend three hours on the practice range trying to figure out what’s wrong with his equipment, he has to run up to the Easton tent and buy another set of x-10s because he’s lost an entire tube full of arrows, and there’s nothing wrong with the bow, just with him - 

 

>——>0))((0<——<

 

When he finally shows his face at the Olympic Training Center two days later, a day past his deadline, Fury puts him on Flexor for three hours as punishment.He’s about ready to chuck one of the goddamn inflatable balance balls into the gym mirror, the fuck if it’ll just bounce off and hit him in the face like last time, when - 

 

“My my my, look what the cat dragged out of a sewage drain outside a dive bar in Mexico,” Natasha croons, swinging a jump rope at her side.Clint glares at her in the mirror.“Done nursing your bruised ego, huh?”

 

Clint turns around and throws one of the inflatable balance balls at her.She steps to the side and dodges easily, grinning.“What are you doing in here?” he snaps, more than a little irritable.“Only RAs are allowed in the gym.You shoot compound.”  

 

Natasha raises her eyebrows like she’s really not impressed by his deductive reasoning.“I’m coaching the babies on the compound Dream Team,” she says slowly, “and I thought you knew me well enough by now to know that there isn’t anywhere on earth I’m not allowed into.”

 

Clint throws down the foam tube thingy and steps off the balance balls, knees folding so he sits down hard on his ass on the mat.“There is no compound Dream Team.”

 

“Sure there is,” Natasha says.“New this month.Our kids keep losing to Korea, so the Olympic Committee finally sucked it up and coughed up some money for the camps.I got hired to keep America Chavez from punching all the sexist pre-pubescent assholes on the boys’ team in the schnoz.”  

 

“They hired _you_ to teach a girl _not_ to punch sexist assholes,” Clint repeats in disbelief.“Really.”

 

Natasha smiles.“I taught her to throw a roundhouse kick,” she says smugly.“She gave Johnny Storm a black eye, and then convinced him to steal one of Coach’s eye patches to cover it up.”

 

Clint laughs, “A protegée after your own heart, huh?” Natasha holds a hand out to him, he clasps it, and she pulls him to his feet, whipping him lightly with the jump rope as she does.

 

“How’ve you been, stranger?” she asks.She steps around him effortlessly onto the Flexor balance balls, and gears up to start jumping rope on them, like a complete and total demon.“Recuping on the beach in your team uniform sipping mai-tais?”

 

Clint shakes his head, starting for the deadweights because Fury will kill him if he comes in here and finds him standing around with his dick in his hand.“Not really.Sam has declared my apartment a biohazard zone and brought in his ‘industrial cleaning supplies.’I’m banned from the premises for the next three days.Shacking up in the Winter Olympics temp dorms, which is about how the last month has gone.”

 

Natasha’s about to answer, _while jump roping on balance balls,_ crazy woman, but there’s a menacing voice from behind them instead, “Well, your month is about to get a whole lot more painful, Barton.”He turns with a kettlebell in hand to see Fury standing at the gym entrance.“I ain’t never met a case of target panic I couldn’t cure.Hell if you’re going to be the first.”

 

>——>0))((0<——<

 

Two weeks later, Clint has had a good solid kick in the ass, a significant portion of his ego drilled into the ground, he’s back to seeing targets in his sleep, and he can shoot an x at ninety meters after being dragged out of bed, hosed down, and handed a bow he’s never seen before at two in the morning.

 

He qualifies fourth at Stage Three of the World Cup in Shanghai.

 

Team USA makes it to the mens team medal finals with him, golden boy Steve Rogers, and enormous Norweigan defecter Thor Odinson taking down Mexico, Colombia, Italy, and finally South Korea to make it into the gold match against Sokovia.Clint’s on a victory high, head buzzing, and then there’s - 

 

That goddamn Sokovian kid, the one nipping at Clint’s heels in the world rankings.His white-blond hair is blinding in the sunlight, his roguish grin is the most attractive thing Clint’s seen in a very long while, and when he gets up on the line and locks eyes with Clint, there’s a playful, competitive glint in his eye that makes Clint’s game-heart kick into overdrive.  

 

Clint shoots a seven in the first set.The kid - Pietro Maximoff - shoots two side-by-side xs, swaggers off the line while his teammate steps up to face off against Steve, and says, “You didn’t see that coming?”

 

Instead of answering, he shoots three more perfect sets, shuts Sokovia out 6-2 for the gold with the help of aclincher nine from Thor in the last five seconds, and cuts in front of Pietro while they’re heading out for the podium, his bows slung over his shoulders.“See you at Stage Four, kid.”

 

Pietro only smiles, shakes Clint’s hand while they’re on the podium, the silver medal around his neck almost matching the shade of his hair.He leans in close to Clint’s ear, and says, “Looking forward to it, old man.”

 

Clint kicks his training regimen into overdrive.He gets up while the sun’s still rising to run with paralypmic team captain Barnes, subjects himself to Natasha’s stretching routine, spends two eighteen hour days forcing Kate Bishop through her own bout of target panic just to remind himself what he’s been through, what he’s accomplished, and by the time he’s boarding a plane to Wroclaw, he’s ready.

 

>——>0))((0<——<

 

As one of the most experienced and well-travelled archers on the US team, Clint has shot in some truly terrible conditions - hundred twenty degree heat indexes, tornadoes on the field, aerial lighting that casts the target into shadow instead of illuminating it, dust devils and tumbleweeds turning over tents, fog you can hardly aim through - but he has to say, this is some of the worst rain he’s ever seen.  

 

The whole field is bundled under rain jackets and umbrellas, bows all crowded in the middle of the athletes’ tents, mud up to their ankles over their flat-bottomed sneakers, all but the most dedicated coaches - like Coulson - retreated behind the spectator line in search of shelter.Clint is soaked to the bone, shivering and decidedly unhappy about it, and coming down with a cold, and to top it all off - 

 

“Keep this up, old man, and Sokovia will be winning her first ever Olympic gold next year.”Pietro swaggers up behind him, still mostly-dry and warm under an umbrella printed with what must be the Sokovian flag, Clint doesn’t know, he’s never seen it.  

 

They’re running one line for qualification, only two archers per bale, there’s no way this is just Clint’s awful fucking luck.He suspects foul play.“So I shot my second eight all day, kid, calm down.And there’s still eight months to Rio, you could have a complete mental breakdown between now and then.”

 

But Pietro just grins wolfishly and picks up the electronic scoring, leaving Clint to dig their soggy paper scorecard out of a Ziploc bag.“No,” says Pietro, “I will only get better.”

 

Clint used to be that arrogant, and then he met Natasha, and she broke his nose.He thinks he’d like to be around when someone finally breaks Pietro’s nose, or maybe he’ll do it himself, right now.

 

“This weather,” Pietro muses, when they’re done scoring and marking, and Clint’s pulling his arrows, struggling to get a good grip on wet carbon, “it is just like we are in my home town.”

 

“Is all of Sokovia so rainy and cold and unwelcoming?” Clint shoots.

 

Pietro shuffles his Nikes in the mud, like he’s a kid standing in a puddle.“I like it better than your dry American heat,” he returns.“My entire body was sunburnt after the Arizona Cup.”

 

Clint finishes pulling his own arrows, and because he’s a complete idiot who can’t back down from a challenge like the one Pietro presents, he starts pulling Pietro’s arrows, too.Silver spin wings, the fucker.Who even shoots spin wings anymore.No one, that’s who.

 

Pietro’s watching him with an expression that’s halfway between amusement and wonder when Clint turns around to hand him his arrows.“Ever heard of sunscreen?”

 

The kid looks him up and down, taking in Clint’s waterlogged dog impression, the tiny waterfall running off the end of his nose despite the baseball cap he’s wearing.“Ever heard of an umbrella?”  

 

He presses in against Clint’s side as they walk back, so they’re both under his Team Sokovia umbrella, even though Clint’s pretty much a lost cause, and it means that Pietro’s entire left side is soaked through with secondhand rainwater.Clint tries valiantly not to think to hard about what it would feel like to sling an arm around the kid’s shoulders and pull him even closer.  

 

>——>0))((0<——<

 

This is how the story always ends, Clint thinks - the decorated, respected veteran usurped by some flashy new hotshot, not even a courtesy memo or a nice twenty one arrow salute to send him off.

 

Pietro grins up at him from where he’s sitting cross legged on Clint’s hotel room bed in his underwear and one of Clint’s USA Archery sweatshirts eating a bowl of - _yogurt?_ really? with _granola?_ \- and he freezes in the door, keycard raised dumbly in front of him.“What the fuck?” he says.

 

The tv is playing some strange foreign game show that Clint’s never seen before, with people running down a narrow hallway away from a paper maché boulder, screaming in what could be Russian, Japanese subtitles scrolling fast across the bottom.“Your teammate Natalia is giving away spare room keys in the lobby to anyone who can beat her at poker,” Pietro explains, smug.

 

“You beat Natasha at poker?” asks Clint, incredulous, because he’s pretty sure Natasha owns a significant portion of land in Russia by way of her terrifying robotic poker face.

 

“No, my sister,” Pietro answers, with that uncomfortable undertone that winners get when they have to admit to not having won something.“Wanda.She reads minds, and she owed me a favor.”

 

Clint comes inside, closing the door behind him, and goes to get a beer out of the mini fridge, because it’s been a long day, and he’s not in the mood to deal with hotel security.“Don’t you have your own room?”

 

“I do,” says Pietro, turning to glance at him as he settles back against the headboard, hat and shoes and - huh, armguard, he should take that off - still on, and pops the cap off the beer.“But it’s less interesting when it does not have you in it, old man.”Clint finishes taking a swig, and Pietro takes the bottle from him.

 

He takes a drink and hands it back with a pleased smile.“Are you even old enough to drink?” Clint asks.

 

“In Sokovia, the drinking age is twelve.So I’ve been old enough to drink for eight years, thank you.”Pietro scoots up the bed until his back hits the headboard, his shoulder bumping Clint’s, and passes back the beer.  

 

He’s had a haircut, white blond curls trimmed close to his head on all sides, slightly longer on top, and Clint kind of wants to run his fingers through it.When he finishes this beer, and the next, he thinks he might want to feel the disparity between the kid’s five o-clock shadow and what he somehow knows has to be pale, smooth skin under the stolen sweatshirt.Maybe with his mouth.

 

“You know,” he says, “I already had five Olympic medals by the time I was your age,” and smiles around the bottle when he feels Pietro’s glare on the side of his face.

 

“Sokovia has been banned from the Olympics since the seventies,” Pietro argues.“I will catch up, don’t worry.Three golds this summer - “

 

“Nice try, kid,” Clint laughs.“You can have silver.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i tried to make this accessible to everyone, but if any of the jargon is unclear feel free to ask for clarification and i'll do my best to help out :)


End file.
